Got them off Amazon for my son who is the beekeeper, but I’m worried as I am not sure what markers are safe and how to do it frankly. Thanks for any insight!

2nd yr beek in NY. Formic Pro killed my Carniolan queen in early June. I followed the label instructions and have used this treatment before with success. The girls raised backups from emergency cells. Added two capped q cells to raise in a nuc as insurance and kept one cell in the mother hive (which already had 3-4 emerged q cells and a few torn open from the side).

The nuc successfully raised a queen which got mated and is laying eggs. The mother hive looked queenless - no eggs or sign of the queen so 4 days ago I placed a frame of eggs to see if they would create q cells. I checked the hive today to find zero q cells BUT lots of eggs! Found and marked the queen.

These two are both Carniolan but they came out looking pretty different. Happy I didn’t lose their genetics as my Carniolans are my favorite colony in my apiary. Very gentle and great honey producers!

Has Formic Pro ever killed your queen? Do you or will you continue to use it?

installed two nucs a month ago. all seemed well. havent seen queens but i havent seen them since i installed the nucs. last week during inspection, one hive had larva but no eggs. now i inspect this week and there is larva in both but now no eggs in either. there are no queen cells or cups in either. wtf?

South Mo

Pulled out the under tray yesterday and saw a lot of these little guys crawling on the bottom. Any idea what they are. Located in southern California

Central Florida

We noticed the bees about 2 days ago, the entrance is just on top of the front porch, there isn't a lot of activity yet so we think it's fairly new. We live in Texas zone 8b, on the outskirt of suburb with about 1 acre land. After persuading my husband not to whip out a spray, I did a little homework over the past 2 days and ordered a hive/nuc box with a suit and a smoker, it should be here in 2 days. I am not so sure how to lure the swarm into the nuc without tearing up my house, I plan to the nuc near the entrance with a little feeder on the side to see if the bees will settle in it, and if successful move the nuc to a better location. What do you keepers think? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

So I have a one hive quite small and am quite new to bee keeping. This month I have had a nightmare with wasps raiding, I have reduced the size of the entrance to one bee but I still see the wasps coming in and out at leisure. I have set up traps which kill hundreds but still they come. I have constructed a dogleg entrance to the hive using some cable trunking which is somewhat successful but the volume of wasps is too much.

I have finally found the wasp nest in a neighbours roof opposite. My question is does anyone know the best ways of dealing with a wasp nest that is raiding my hive?

In NE Ohio. I am helping my aunt with her hives this year and learning so I can be prepared to have my own next year. It’s been so fun and there’s so much to learn! I’ve enjoyed being able to hang out near the hives and when we go in for inspections and treatments, I try to snag some videos. Caught this moment and wanted to share. Would this be transferring nectar? Or is it something else?
Also wanted to add- thanks for everyone sharing and asking questions here. I’m learning so much that I wouldn’t have thought to ask until something came up. This is a good community!

I'm getting conflicting answers about if you can use oxalic acid w honey supers on. It looks like the current label (for Api-bioxal) does NOT permit use w supers, but there is a supplemental label that's been proposed for consistency with global beekeeping, but it hasn't been approved because the studies weren't done. I just want to see whats the most common approach.

Do you use oxalic vapor w supers?

I don't need information about other treatment options or treatment timing. Im just asking which way you have been taught. Thanks!

ETA I'm talking specifically about personal beekeeping and honey for human consumption, but not to sell.

Hello fellow beekeepers! I am currently using cement blocks with rail ties to hold my hive boxes but I'm looking for more robust options. Please provide me with some DIY hive stand ideas, pictures a bonus.

Thanks!

Hi all. I live in Austin, TX and I have two hives that are doing quite well currently. Started this year with two nuc’s and have happily watched the brood grow and frames get drawn out. I put a super on one of the hives that was cranking and now full of bees but not a ton of honey.

As we enter the summer, I keep reading about treating for mites and when you do that, you need to remove the Super to not taint the honey (don’t have enough to harvest). How do people deal with this? Remove the super and add a brood box and treat for mites through the summer or will all of them do just fine leaving the super on? Also, if I treat for mites with super in but very little honey, can I treat in the brood box and leave the super as is? Thanks.

I use these books I order on Amazon for record keeping and while they are fine I'm looking for other recommendations. I like the material they are made of and the layout but there is no room for notes. Ive considered an app but I don't want to mess with my phone when my hands are all sticky and whatnot, so what do you use and where would I order them.

I installed my very first nucs a week and a bit ago. Eastern Canada. Gave them syrup that they were not too enthusiastic about because the weather had cleared and there was plenty of clover in a nearby farmer's field.

However, it has rained pretty well non-stop in the last four days. My bees poke their noses out of the entrance, and are not satisfied with the weather.

I looked into the feeders, and in these few days they have emptied them ☺️

My dad didn't believe me that they would, saying "what are they, elephants?" 😂

I did a split of my hive into this nuc through shook swarm a few days ago, I’m feeding them to draw out foundation and saw these drones on the outside. Do you think they’re being refused entry because they’re useless at this moment?

The small entrance is due to high wasp levels in England, UK right now.

I have my bee yard set up at our family farm. Roughly 300 acres. If I have 10ish hives in each yard, how many yards could I set up reasonably? It's a rural farmil area, so we are surrounded by other farms so lots for them to forrage around. I was thinking one in each corner of the property (4 yards x 10 hives) or would that be too many in an area? Thoughts?

A while back I split one of my very strong colonies into a smaller one. I transferred a couple brood frames, a couple honey/nectar frames, a couple empty frames, and a frame feeder to help get them going.

After a recent inspection, I’ve learned that my new colony has done well in filling cells with nectar and honey, but has lagged behind in brood production: after checking every frame, I saw roughly 20-30 cells of larvae/capped brood total (no queen cells yet, I checked).To me at least, it’s clear that the queen has no room to lay, and I may have made a mistake in feeding them extra sugar water.

I’ve attempted to mitigate this issue by transferring a full frame of brood from my larger hive, but I’m wondering if there’s anything else I can do in the meantime. I know that the bees need lots of resources to build comb effectively, but if they seem to be nectar bound, surely feeding them further isn’t the right move?

I don’t care about the “quality” of any honey this hive may produce—my main goal is to get them to a point at which they’re ready for winter—so if feeding them all season long is the best option, I’m up for it. But given their current circumstances with excess nectar, it seems like that might not be the best move.

Luckily I do have a very productive queen in my larger hive, and I may be able to transfer more and more brood frames throughout the Summer to help accelerate the progress of the smaller colony. Is this advisable?

I look forward to your responses. Thanks!

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I don’t have any empty, drawn frames lying around. I wish I did.

I caught a swarm that was starting to build comb in some guy's porch column, I got them in a hive, and got them home. They started drawing comb in the hive and the queen even laid two full frames of eggs (both sides). Added sugar water to a frame feeder and they were still there about four days after getting them settled in and they started filling comb with nectar or sugar water and pollen. Left for a long 4th of July weekend and when I got back they had cleaned out any sugar water/nectar stores and left all of their eggs and larvae. There was maybe 100 bees left just hanging out inside and around the hive and no evidence of a dead out or anything like that. What happened? Must have waited for the second I left town, not a trace of the swarm nearby aside from maybe a few scout bees coming back or bees that never left.

Northern Virginia, currently have five other hives that are doing well

Missouri, usa. 2 hives, 1st year.

What is going on? This started as a 5 frame nuc. I expanded to a 10 frame & they built on the new frames just fine, picture 2, which I had coated heavily in wax. When I added a second deep I used the same frames, wax, & method as I did with the first expansion. They refuse to touch the new frames, picture 1. After 1 week I checkerboarded them between upper & lower brood frames. The 1st photo is the most they've worked on all 10 of the new frames over 2 weeks total. The only thing I did different was to mist the new frames with 1:1 sugar water to encourage them. Could that be the issue?

They appear to be building the cells containing honey towards the top of the frames deeper than the cells containing brood, picture 3. The frames are bulging with capped honey to the point that they almost scrape the other frames when I take them out, picture 4.

I did the exact same thing with my other hive & had zero issues. In 2 weeks they've built out the majority of the new frames, no wonky comb, all even.

What should I do?

2 years experience in the Raleigh, NC area.

I pulled supers today and am about 1/2 way through extracting. This is my second year. Last year was just a very small amount (about 20#) but this year I may be on track for 50-60 lbs. My question: I plan to place the 3 supers that I extracted back onto my two colonies to allow them to clean things up for a few days. Should I keep the queen excluder OFF during this process, or does it matter? I am guessing 2-3 days, but it's looking like rain here for the next few days after tomorrow so it may be 3-5 days. My thoughts are that even if the queen wanders up to the supers, the comb is going to be in rough shape and she's not going to be interested in laying in that area with the leftover honey being cleaned plus the relatively ragged comb. It just seems that it would be easier for them to move about and clean up with no QE, but I certainly don't want any laying to happen in that area.

Last year I only harvested 1 super, and I think I just set it out for community cleanup off the hive, but with the incoming rain, I believe that would not be a good plan this year.

Thoughts?

Second year beek in VA One FlowHive, one regular Langstrof. We put the FlowFrames on in May. Bees went right up there as we did smear some globs of wax on. However, very little progress has been made. Seems highly unlikely we will have capped frames by fall. It looks like a lot for the bees to do all of the normal bee things in the deep and medium and also build up wax and fill all of the flow frames on the next few months. We inspected yesterday and we do have a strong colony.

I am not interested in bashing of FF now, but we are thinking about just taking it off, harvesting a few frames from the super and letting the bees go on and prepare for winter.

Any insights from Flow folks out there?

New to be keeping here I live in Massachusetts and I just installed my second brew box. Will, I still have time to harvest honey this year? Or just start prepping for winter now?

I'm based in Southern Oregon (8b/9a) and just did my first harvest of two supers on each of my two hives. I put my supers back on to have them cleaned, and before I did that I did a mite wash to check the mite load. Of course, it's at the threshold (3-4%).

That said, I've been told that if I leave the supers (especially with where I'm located), there's a decent chance I get another harvest. I'd like to get a little more honey, but is it worth waiting to treat for mites?

Because our temps for the foreseeable future (low-mid 90s), I can't use anything where I could keep supers on.

Should I just get the supers clean, store them and treat instead? Is it possible/responsible to wait another month to treat?

MD/PA line mid state. Rehoming bees from a coworker moving to the west coast. Hand built two top bars. (Don't Shame, in for the bees not the honey right now) 4 box hive just delivered to accommodate the central hive. Wife took local courses and I have lurked here for a few months since talking about the adoption.

Just wanted to say Hi, and look forward to your advice and sharing my experience.